Herbert Bristow Hughes

[1] Envisaging a bright future in the new colony, they called for H. B. Hughes, who arrived in Adelaide aboard Davidsons in May 1843.

The Hughes brothers selected 3,000 square miles (7,800 km2) of land, stretching from Crystal Brook in the south-west to Yacka in the south-east, up to Mount Lock and Mannanarie in the north-east across nearly to Mount Remarkable and down the eastern side of the Flinders Ranges back to Crystal Brook.

[3] At Booyoolee station, which included some of the best land on the Rocky River, near Mount Remarkable and Gladstone, H. B. Hughes with his brother, who later retired, bred cattle, sheep and horses.

He went further north, and founded Nockatunga Station on the Wilson River, a tributary of Cooper Creek in Queensland, near the SA/NSW border,[2] from where he drove mobs of cattle to his lucerne paddocks in Netley to fatten up for the Adelaide market.

He established extensive meat canning factories at Booyoolee and on the Port River, using machinery he imported from England.

The paddle-steamer Decoy and her barges Reliance and Croupier were built for him in Glasgow and brought out in sections, and were used for the carriage of stock and wool from his up-river properties to Morgan.

[4] Another noted horse in his stable was Sir Edmund, which he purchased from William Blackler, and whose progeny, such as Simpleton, Hughes gave names starting with "S".

When Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, on his Australia tour visited St. Peter's College in October 1867, he had lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Hughes at "Athelney".

Laura's elder sister Elizabeth Hagen White ( – 28 October 1881) in 1861 married William Herbert Squires ( – 30 November 1911), a senior SA public servant.